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Danniella Westbrook has recalled how her own children would shake her awake to check that she hadn’t died from a drug overdose every day as she battled her drug addiction.

The former EastEnders’ star, who has a well-documented battle with drugs in the public eye, has opened up about how she fears another relapse could kill her.

Danniella has struggled for years with a coke addiction and fell off the wagon after 12 years of sobriety in 2014.

Speaking after getting five months clean and free from cocaine, the 45-year-old has recognised the gravity of her situation and realises that she has to stay strong.

‘I’ve got another relapse in me, but I don’t have another recovery,’ she told The Sun.

‘It’s do or die for me. I know I’m one relapse away from dying.’

Left extremely fragile and weighing just six and a half stone at her lowest, Danniella would focus all of her energy on getting her next hit instead of listening to the desperate pleas from her children to get better.

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Speaking on The Jeremy Kyle Show earlier this year, Danniella – who once splurged £250,000 on her coke habit, confessed that she would still take drugs while pregnant with her son, Kai and even took it while she was in labour.

‘I could have killed him yeah, and my daughter when I was pregnant with her,’ she said frankly.

‘I tried for years to make it up to them by buying them things.’

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Danniella claims she begged social services to look after her children as she feared for them while in the throes of addiction. She went on to be diagnosed as bi-polar and suffering from bouts of psychosis.

Following an appearance on The Jeremy Kyle Show, Danniella went to rehab for treatment.

‘If Jeremy hadn’t reached out to me I would be dead. When he saw me for the first time out of rehab he had tears in his eyes. I told him he’d saved my life.

‘I was six and a half stone. I didn’t realise how bad I was. I looked like a 70-year-old woman, like I was already dead.

‘Cocaine ruined my life. It hurt my health and stripped me of my personality and my self-respect and self-worth.’

Danniella revealed that she’d often contemplated suicide as she struggled against the addiction.

Danniella Westbrook with her son Kai (Picture: HODDER AND STOUGHTON)

Danniella Westbrook and her children, Jodie and Kai in 2004 (Picture: PA)

It was first reported in 2013 that Danniella had been the victim of a sexual assault in the 1990s after she was reportedly held at gunpoint and gang-raped after falling behind in payments to a drug dealer.

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She waived her right to anonymity and wrote about the harrowing experience in her book, Faith, Hope and Clarity.

‘They all raped me and took it in turns,’ she wrote.

‘For them, a two-day drugs and sex binge. For me a life-time sentence. Each time I lay there and let them get on with it.’

‘When I was in the throes of addiction, nothing could stop me. I would have passed a lie detector to say I won’t take drugs today, but then in the same breath be on the phone to a dealer,’ Danniella has said.